February 6, 2026

Anthem BioWare failure is shutting down

By the time I post this, Anthem servers will be shut down, making the game unplayable after 12th January 2026. Joining a long list of lost video games, like so much art and culture, preservation is second, profit is first. I have repeated this before but I firmly believe in game preservation. One blog post talking about it can be found here. Therefore, in simple terms, I support the idea: use it or lose it. No longer want to support it, it should become open source, allowing it to be preserved for the future. Anthem is not a household name, so background from Wiki, and from various other sources.

The Original Concept (2012–2014)

Anthem is a game made by BioWare, published by EA in 2019. EA are the owners of BioWare, an in-house studio that creates games, with the publisher publishing whatever their studios make and sometimes independent titles.

Troubled development of the game. It started back in 2012, no strong ideas but they knew it had to be an action game. One which allowed cooperative play; an early idea was making Iron Man-like suits. A survival game pulling players and creatures (computer) into an area to survive. Mission-driven over loot-driven, with the aim to survive. Remember, this was in 2012—that sounds like an interesting concept. With events happening, that’s what the game looked like during 2014. Fortnite would be released in 2017 which would be similar but not exactly like that. Destiny had a similar idea released in 2014. Sure the studio knew that would influence what they did.

Leadership and Vision

They wanted to move away from Mass Effect and Dragon Age, trying something new with an action game. Well, so far they had done RPG action games. Casey Hudson, an executive producer who worked on the Mass Effect trilogy, was in charge of it. He left the company in 2014, with the project looking like it would work out. Hudson was rather good at keeping things on track, so people were rightly worried him leaving would let the game drift. A vague set of ideas with no real plan. Off to a good start. What you’re missing here is somebody bringing it all together with a vision. Also missing a stronger idea of what they want to do.

The Engine and Management Crisis

There were worries about being able to do that with Frostbite. Worse still, EA wanted everybody to move to the Frostbite engine, the studio DICE used, which was not a good fit for what the team wanted to do with Anthem. Lacked the experience with the engine before being forced to use it. A reason why studios generally work with an engine as a support studio before doing a full release. Certain ideas had to be scrapped due to this unknown engine. To make matters worse, people who knew Frostbite moved to support the FIFA series. You can see the mismanagement starting to add up can’t you.

Four years in, the game was facing similar issues to Mass Effect 4 and Dragon Age 4. Poor management on both projects. Lead designers not really making many concrete choices. In 2016-2017 more changes were made. First Söderlund, who is head of EA studios in charge of all the games, was unhappy with BioWare’s work, sending senior members to Sweden to talk to DICE about the game—creators of the Frostbite engine. BioWare considered this to be a warning: make a demo for E3 2017, if it does not impress him the game is cancelled. Which meant re-adding flying, which had been added, removed, added so many times.

The Rush to Production

The demo saved the project and was shown to the world in 2017. Remember that Mass Effect game? Well that got released by a satellite studio and well, had problems at launch, drawing resources away from Anthem, which was not the original name for the game. Not a success to add to the pressure on BioWare overall. To make matters worse was a tension between two studios over the game, mainly due to lack of concrete choices about the gameplay. To make matters worse staff began to leave in 2017; one key figure died.

Just to give you an idea, the game went from pre-production to production in 2017. Yes, 5 years of pre-production. It was clearly behind schedule. EA would not let it be delayed past March 2019. Late 2017 August, the game was in production. People who had been working on Dragon Age moved back to Anthem and Hudson returned too. Meaning the whole game was made in under a year, under the direction of people who were forced to clean up the mess. Things were changing quickly; other things like balance ended up on the back burner. Also important things like narrative.

The Launch and the End

You guessed it, more people ended up leaving due to the stress. It came out and well yeah, when your CEO is talking about it at E3 not in a good light things are bad. Little bit of post-launch content came out after being delayed. Content planned was scaled back and suddenly all the commitments EA made disappeared. Why? Well, to improve the core issues with the game.

BioWare tried to save the game by announcing a plan to reinventing core gameplay in February 2020; next year 2021 all development was ceased. They did release some content, but with radio silence and a lack of content, it was obvious. Pitched as a co-op game with live service elements, which at the time the industry was moving towards. Yet the game flopped and was considered a failure. Death of seasonal updates came and a reboot was planned. About 30 people would be working on it. EA and BioWare executives saw it and decided to scrap the whole thing in 2021. Is some good news here: it meant cancelling multiplayer elements in the upcoming Dragon Age game. Hence in 2026 the game would become unplayable due to its content being on said servers.

After Anthem

After Anthem, the Mass Effect Legendary Edition (remaster of the old trilogy) was released. Dragon Age 4 was released. Both getting good reception along with sales. Well, not the insane numbers EA wanted. Speaking of which, during the same time BioWare had trouble, EA faced even more trouble. Falling sales and losing rights to FIFA. Expected to make more than it did. Not to say they were doing bad, just no longer numbers investors had expected. The result was a hostile takeover with the company going private. Not the only gaming publisher to face issues during this time. Plenty of others expanded or promised too much.

Death of Anthem

Source for the above is from Wiki, but that is the history of Anthem. Reason why I’m not talking about the gameplay is simple: I did not play it. Looks like it had some good ideas, just never really knew what to do with it. Based on the troubled history of its development, you can see that. Hints of troubled development that really should have been stopped a long time ago. Yet somehow poor management continued until, well, the mess came out.

Now it is going to be deleted forever. The only hints it existed will now be physical, with some digital footprints in the form of videos or marketing material. Thing is, such footprints, with time, will be removed. Like sandprints on a beach, waves will slowly wash them away. That’s the sad part of it really. All that time and energy disappearing.

Update: Since writing this post, a couple of volunteers have been trying to get this game back online. Reverse engineering things is just a proof of concept at the moment, and highlighting some of the rushed coding and choices made. Worth reading the story here.